


Friends Don't Owe Favors

by Vivien



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/pseuds/Vivien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Door had only one friend in the Underside, she was glad it was Richard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends Don't Owe Favors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/gifts).



“I don’t know, Richard,” Door said, biting her nail. “I can’t afford owing the Marquis another favor.”

“Good point. Tell me what you know about the Marylebone, then. What’s she done?”

“I can’t afford to owe you more favors, either. You have to understand how things work here if you’re going to survive.”

“I’m a bravo, Lady Door,” he said, giving her a flourish of a bow that ended with Hunter’s knife firmly in hand. “I choose my jobs, and I choose to not be owed a favor by you. Invite me round to dinner, and that will be enough.”

“Oh, but you know I can’t cook.” Door’s lips turned up into a tiny smile. Richard was her friend, and she’d discovered that having a friend was more powerful than having an ally.

“Then it’s curry at the next Floating Market. Now, the Marylebone, what do we need to do?”

Door sighed with relief and pulled a ledger with her father’s cramped handwriting filling the pages. “They say the first Marylebone came to the Courtyard of the Bourne after a great fire ruined London Above. It’s an inherited title. The Marylebone chooses her successor, and the current one – Father said she was called Irini before she was taken in by the previous Marylebone – is a piece of work. Father despised her, and Mother didn’t like her name spoken aloud in the House. And now she says her son is the heir of the House of the Arch. As if my father would have been in the same room alone with her, much less got a child on her.”

“So she’s a liar and it’s her word against yours. More pledge fealty to her than to you?”

Door bites her lip and nods. That was the worst part. After all she’d done, many of her family’s former allies turned to an established house instead of hers.

“Well then, we’ll have to sway them back and do something about this Marylebone and her lies. I’ve never been by the Courtyard of the Bourne. Fancy a stroll?”

He held his arm out to her with a gleam in his eye. Door giggled and took it. If she had only one friend in the Underside, she was glad it was Richard.


End file.
